I am researching whether the following is possible and if so how I could go about achieving it.
We collect reviews for businesses from their customers and we’d like
Currently the Google Places API does not have write capability. It only has read capability. Right now only ratings are available, but I suspect reviews might come someday too.
Although you can send check-in signals and fix Places through the API. Hopefully Google will add the ability to send reviews and receive them.
If you're looking to get your content added to Google, you may want to talk to their content partnerships teams http://www.google.com/support/mapcontentpartners/
Since Google's local and maps initiatives are under the same people that would be the place to go.